West Sussex Trading Standards investigate lamb kebabs

With the discovery of horse meat in supermarket beef burgers hitting the headlines, the problem of misdescribing food has come under the microscope.

Over the past few months, West Sussex Trading Standards Service has been examining descriptions applied to kebabs at sellers across the county.

In an exploratory exercise carried out by officers, eight out of 10 descriptions were found to be wrong.

It was discovered while many lamb kebabs were mostly made from lamb, they also contained significant amounts of poultry, beef and even veal.

If you buy a lamb kebab or a doner kebab, advice from Trading Standards is that the only meat in it should be lamb unless the menu description tells you otherwise.

Most of the identified problems were because of local sellers not understanding the rules rather than deliberating setting out to deceive the public and for this reason the sellers were given a warning and a chance to put matters right before being re-visited. All corrected the descriptions applied.

A large proportion of sellers in West Sussex have now been visited, and Trading Standards officers have worked with them to ensure they understand the requirements and sell products which are correctly described.

County council cabinet member for public protection, Christine Field, said: “We want to remind traders that misdescribing food is a serious matter.

“What goes on sale for the public to eat has to be what has been described.

“Anyone who has any concerns should get in touch with our Trading Standards officers through Citizens Advice on 08454 040506 or the West Sussex County Council website.”